Titans of the Twentieth Century
Throughout the course of history, many people have influenced the lives of the American people and the economic course of the United States. Although only a little over two hundred years old, the United States has rapidly gained its economic power through the great minds and incentives of its people. During the early twentieth century, many Americans saw the prosperity that America had to offer. John D. Rockefeller, J.P. Morgan, and Andrew Carnegie took advantage of the growth of America and helped to shape the American business, economy, and society into what it is today.
The life and career of John Davidson Rockefeller is a story of American economic development that led to great success. Born in 1839 in Richford, New York, Rockefeller built an economic empire. Rockefeller’s first interest in acquiring money first began through his church involvement. He volunteered to raise $2000 for a church debt. Later Rockefeller confessed, "The plan absorbed me. I contributed what I could, and my first ambition to earn more money was aroused by this and similar undertakings in which I was constantly engaged."(1) He began his career as a humble oil business bookkeeper in Cleveland, Ohio and in just seven years rose to control a tenth of the entire United States oil industry.(2)
In the late nineteenth century, the oil industry was open to everyone. Sensing the commercial potential of the expanding oil production in western Pennsylvania in the early 1860’s, he built his first oil refinery near Cleveland in 1863.(3) He created new oil related companies such as engineering and pipeline firms that seemed to be independent operators. Rockefeller and his close colleagues, Andrews and Flagler, secretly co...
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... Carosso, 281-282.
22. Carosso, 338-342.
23. Carosso, 361-363.
24. Carosso, 376.
25. Carosso, 389.
26. Harold C. Livesay, Andrew Carnegie and the Rise of Big Business (Boston: Little,
Brown and Company, 1975), 45.
27. Livesay, 7-8.
28. Livesay, 40-42.
29. Livesay, 28
30. Livesay, 54.
31. Livesay, 93.
32. Livesay, 93-106.
33. Livesay, 132.
34. Livesay, 140.
35. Livesay, 187-189.
36. Livesay, 192.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
- Carosso, Vincent P. The Morgans, Private International Bankers 1854-1913. Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1987.
- Flynn, John T. God's Gold. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1932.
- Livesay, Harold T. Andrew Carnegie and the Rise of Big Business. Boston: Little,
Brown and Company, 1975.
- Nevins, Allan. John D. Rockefeller. New York: Charles Scribner's Son, 1940.
It's said that before John D. Rockefeller died, "he gave away about $550,000,000 to charity, more than any other American before him had ever possessed" (98). His money went to schools, churches and also "paid teams of scientists who found cures for yellow fever, meningitis, and hookworm"(97).
The american society will not look like this today without Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller and JP Morgan. They took astonishing risks to attain that success. They created an innovation that no one could ever imagine. Andrew Carnegie, John D, Rockefeller and JP Morgan, are the empire builders and pillars of American Society because they have changed the way we think and created a new way of living.
Many people consider Rockefeller a robber of industry because of his forcible ways of gaining his monopolies. Rockefeller was fond of buying out small and large competitors. If the competitors refused to sell they often found Rockefeller cutting the prices of his Standard Oil or in the worst cases, their factories mysteriously blowing up. Rockefeller was obsessed with controlling the oil market and used many of undesirable tactics to flush his competitors out of the market. Rockefeller was also a master of the rebate game. He was one of the most dominant controllers of the railroads. He was so good at the rebate that at some times he skillfully commanded the rail road to pay rebates to his standard oil company on the traffic of other competitors. He was able to do this because his oil traffic was so high that he could make or break a section of a railroad a railroad company by simply not running...
In the years following the Civil War, the American economy was suffering from extreme disorder. However, during the late 1800s and early 1900s, important leaders of American industry arose, essentially transforming the American financial system from chaos to efficiency. These powerful men shaped America into a world superpower and the country’s economy sparked jealous across the globe. Their contributions to business positively affected not only the United States’ economy, but society as well. Andrew Carnegie, John Davison Rockefeller, and John Pierpont Morgan reflect the mammoth industrial age of America. Although some may argue these industrialists were “robber barons,” these men were, in reality, “captains of industry” utilizing modern business practices and technology which provided both cheap products and job opportunities for the public, as well as becoming large-scale philanthropists and contributing much to American society.
As America’s first billionaire, few individuals in history can compare with John D. Rockefeller Sr. His wealth around the turn of the 20th century would be worth roughly twenty-two billion dollars in modern United States dollars. It is undeniable that Rockefeller changed the landscape of the American petroleum industry by defining the nature of oil production. By 1883, Rockefeller was laying the foundations for what we now know as the vertically integrated company and the modern multinational. The fruit of Rockefeller’s labor, the Standard Oil companies, controlled ninety five percent of petroleum refining and transport by 1880. It would not come as a surprise, given Rockefeller’s opulence, to find Standard Oil and its business practices under close scrutiny by his competition as well as the federal government. Rockefeller’s ruthless and legally questionable business tactics threatened the well-being of the United States’ capitalistic economy. Although the federal government had a prepared response to monopolies, the Sherman Antitrust, it was not enforced to its fullest potential because of the overwhelming influence possessed by Rockefeller due to his wealth. At the time of Standard Oil’s dissolution, their prominence was already waning, providing an entry point for powerful trust busters, such as Theodore Roosevelt and influential writer, Ida M. Tarbell. Standard Oil was allowed to exist for over a decade because of the economical, political, social, and legal complications in separating Rockefeller’s companies and the oil industry. The proper environment for a dedicated antitrust effort existed only after Standard Oil’s initial decline in influence.
...mpanies, it eventually came to the point where they couldn’t keep up and eventually became a part of Standard Oil. By the time Rockefeller had reached the age of 40, his company had controlled all national oil refining by 90% and about 70% of international export of said oil.
Rockefeller was an industrialist and philanthropist who made his fortune by founding the Standard Oil Company in 1870. Attempting to monopolize the industry and squeeze out the middle man, Rockefeller slowly gained almost complete control of the oil industry. He formed the powerful Standard Oil Trust in 1882, which united all of his companies and secured 95% of oil production in the United States for himself. Rockefeller was an industrialist who stamped out all of his competition with his trust, eventually leading to Congress intervention.
During the turn of the 19th century, the American economy rapidly switched from an agriculture base to one of the largest manufacturers in the world through Industrialization. This movement could be tied to the Gilded Age, or the time between the Civil War and WWI, where the rich were extremely poor and vice versa. The wealthier Americans during the Gilded Age were the poster children of the nation, the picture of American opportunity, and a large contributor to the spike in immigration to the United States during the turn of the 19th century. With developments in manufacturing, these wealthy citizens capitalized on the opportunity and became leaders during Industrialization, earning themselves the title of Industrialists. Industrialists during
Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller were two of the richest men in American history. They relied on steel and oil to begin their journey as moneymaking businessmen. Without these two important materials, the growth of railroads, bridge construction, and even the production of gasoline was not possible. There are many similarities and differences between Carnegie and Rockefeller and how they became the successful men they are known as today.
Rockefeller was born in New York State in 1839 and educated in Cleveland, Ohio. Rockefeller became the first billionaire in America by monopolizing oil. The oil business had a lot of competition, and Rockefeller had the great idea of creating a cartel, named South Improvement Company, to reduce competition. He took opportunities, made deals with Railroad companies with strategies like spying and bribing. By 1872, Rockefeller’s Standard Oil controlled 90 percent of the refining oil business, and became the first monopoly of the era. He retired in the mid-1890s and devoted his time to philanthropy. Also, he contributed money to churches and donated money to schools, mostly for
John Davison Rockefeller of English and German decent was born on July 8, 1839 in Richford, New York. He grew up in a family of six children him being the second. His father was William Avery Rockefeller a con artist and his mother was Eliza Davison a homemaker. Rockefeller’s father William was infamous for his notorious schemes. When Rockefeller was only a child his father was caught having an affair with their housekeeper Nancy and was also gone f...
John D. Rockefeller, born on July 8, 1839, has had a huge impact on the course of American history, his reputation spans from being a ruthless businessperson to a thoughtful philanthropist (Tarbell 41). He came from a family with not much and lived the American dream, rising to success through his own wit and cunning, riding on the backs of none. His legacy is huge, amassing the greatest private wealth of any American in history. Rockefeller’s influence on our country has been both a positive and a negative one, he donated huge sums of money to various public institutions and revolutionized the petroleum industry. Along with all the positives to the country, Rockefeller also had many negative affects as well, including, by gaining his riches by means of a monopoly, often using illegal methods, by giving others a reason to frown upon capitalism, and by hurting smaller businesses.
A "robber baron" was someone who employed any means necessary to enrich themselves at the expense of their competitors. Did John D. Rockefeller fall into that category or was he one of the "captains of industry", whose shrewd and innovative leadership brought order out of industrial chaos and generated great fortunes that enriched the public welfare through the workings of various philanthropic agencies that these leaders established? In the early 1860s Rockefeller was the founder of the Standard Oil Company, who came to epitomize both the success and excess of corporate capitalism. His company was based in northwestern Pennsylvania.
"John D. Rockefeller and the Oil Industry." The Freeman | Ideas On Liberty. Web. 19 Mar. 2011. .
The start of Rockefeller’s generous gifts of the wonderful thing called money was when he was just a boy. When Rockefeller was 16 he got his first job as being a bookkeeper at a brokerage of fresh produce. From the beginning of his job he donated 6% of his pay to charities, which was a mere 50 cents a day, soon tithing towards the Baptist church. Of course this was only the